Hey folks,
It's time for me to reveal my ideas for the 2011 time trials. We really haven't had a real time trial since 2004... that's seven years ago. I'd like to bring it back this year, and here's what I plan to do:

1a. This is going to be a five game, five week tournament. There will be no breaks in between games. The first game will be January 9th, and the tournament will end on February 13th.
1b. Each game will begin on Sunday at or around 2359GMT, and will end at the next Sunday at 23:59:59 GMT. Because only the coordinator will know the games in advance, he will be ineligible to participate in the contest. (But he's going to play the games just to see how well he would have done )
1c. Each game will be revealed as they begin or slightly before, depending on RL issues.
1d. Each game will come from a different genre. That means five games, five genres.
2a. Each game is going to be "get as far as you can in the least time possible"... but I may place a "maximum distance" in each game. Like your game could be over when you complete a certain number of stages.
2b. Each game will be submitted to the main site. Submitting to the forums will not count. I will be respectfully requesting that games are set up in this format: *tt2-gamex, where x is the game number.
3. The exception to rule 2a will be the final game, where you will have a 4 minute time limit to go as far as you can within that time limit. Whoever gets the farthest in the final game wins the time trials.

Well gee, you wonder, why should I participate until the last game? Well...

4. (1st reason) The first four games will have a minimum requirement. They're probably going to be quite easy to your standards, considering how badly I play these days... but you'll have to accomplish those minimums to play another day, so to speak.
5a. (2nd reason) You can earn up to 6 minutes of extra time in the final game based on your performance of the first four games. Basically, if you win a game in the first four rounds, you will add 90 seconds to your time limit in the final game. The rest of the schedule is this: 60-45-30-25-20-15-12-10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1-0-0... so yeah, at least placing in the top three is paramount here.
5b. If you earn no extra time, but you still pass the minimum requirement, you WILL live to play another day. In fact, you could earn no bonus time throughout all four rounds and pass the minimum requirements in all four. This means you still would have the opportunity to win the time trails... but, of course, your chances of winning will be much less than somebody who ranked high in all four games...
5c. In the rare event of a tie, the bonus time will be averaged between the two places contended. (so a two-way tie for first = (90+60)/2 = 75 second time bonus, and a three way tie for third = (45+30+25)/3 = 31.67 second time bonus)
5d. If there's a tie in the final game, whoever had more bonus time after the first four games will be given the higher position. If there's still a tie after that and it's not for first place, then it will be declared a tie. If there's a tie for first place, then a seven-day "overtime" period will be run in the same fifth game which will be explained if that happens.

And now the mundane rules:
6a. For four of the games selected, WolfMAME 99 or 106 will be required. For the other game selected, WolfMAME 140 will be required. Those requirements will be made clear as the games are announced.
6b. All recordings must average 99%-101% in speed. No exceptions.
6c. The "24 hour rule" is dropped. It really can't be enforced. But I do expect file dates to be within the time limit of each game.

7a. Sportsmanship is an expectation in all MARP tournaments. In this tournament, I will caution you that any poor sportsmanship may (and probably will) result in penalties up to and including reduction in the time limit of the final game or even expulsion from the tournament.
7b. "Sniping", i.e. doing the following within the last 24 hours: submitting only one recording in the week, or submitting a horrendous recording early(i.e. close to last place) then submitting a spectacular recording(i.e. close to first place) late, is considered poor sportsmanship. This will be allowed once within the four games (and you better have a darn good reason for it)... after that, the player will be penalized according to rule 7a, depending on the severity of the violation. (if you "snipe" a 5th place recording, you won't be penalized as harshly than you "sniping" a 1st place recording) Any "sniping" done in the final game will result in the recording being invalidated.
7c. At the end of the tournament, the coordinator will select a "fair play award" recipient. (or two or three or whatever ) Best sportsmanship will receive the honor.

8. These rules may change without notice, but don't expect them to change during the tournament.
9. Most importantly, have fun! And try something new! Try the time trials this year! </cheesy advertisement>

RAX wrote:I like these rules!
The only weak poit IMO is the "Whatever WolfMAME version". Are you sure that in a so delicate thing (comparing timing) it's goog to leave this choice to players?

Hmmmm... good point Rax. I was thinking this way because I wanted this tournament to be a little more casual... and I'm also covering myself in case I make a boo-boo in game selection... even though I'm 99% sure that four of the five games selected will work on Wolf104 w/o testing it. (I have to test the fifth... well, OK, I'll test them all, of course )

I suspect all of the players will probably use Wolf 99, 104, or 140 anyway unless something comes up... I figured I'd give the players some discretion.

gameboy9 wrote:7a. Sportsmanship is an expectation in all MARP tournaments. In this tournament, I will caution you that any poor sportsmanship may (and probably will) result in penalties up to and including reduction in the time limit of the final game or even expulsion from the tournament.
7b. "Sniping", i.e. submitting only one recording in the week, that being within the last 24 hours, is considered poor sportsmanship. This will be allowed once within the four games (and you better have a darn good reason for it)... after that, the player will be penalized according to rule 7a, depending on the severity of the violation. (if you "snipe" a 5th place recording, you won't be penalized as harshly than you "sniping" a 1st place recording) Any "sniping" done in the final game will result in the recording being invalidated.
7c. At the end of the tournament, the coordinator will select a "fair play award" recipient. (or two or three or whatever ) Best sportsmanship will receive the honor.

gameboy9 wrote:7a. Sportsmanship is an expectation in all MARP tournaments. In this tournament, I will caution you that any poor sportsmanship may (and probably will) result in penalties up to and including reduction in the time limit of the final game or even expulsion from the tournament.
7b. "Sniping", i.e. submitting only one recording in the week, that being within the last 24 hours, is considered poor sportsmanship. This will be allowed once within the four games (and you better have a darn good reason for it)... after that, the player will be penalized according to rule 7a, depending on the severity of the violation. (if you "snipe" a 5th place recording, you won't be penalized as harshly than you "sniping" a 1st place recording) Any "sniping" done in the final game will result in the recording being invalidated.
7c. At the end of the tournament, the coordinator will select a "fair play award" recipient. (or two or three or whatever ) Best sportsmanship will receive the honor.

I've updated the rules to discuss what happens in the event of a dead-heat tie. I also added an additional potential case for "sniping", and I corrected one of the suggested wolfMAME versions from 104 to 106. (I thought 104 was required in K8... whoops! )

Just an update... I have taken a look at the recordings of all games and have determined good "minimums" and "maximums" for each game. Each game will have "minimums" harder than the previous, but I'm not expecting them to be difficult by any means. I should also tell you that I'm intending for "maximums" to last about 20 minutes (maximum ), so optimization is more than possible. This pretty much means many of the games WILL NOT be "defeated", fyi. If you think 20 minutes is too short or long, or you'd like to "defeat" the games, let me know. I found one of the games I wanted to try was a horrendous idea... it obviously has been replaced. I'll talk about that more when the tournament is over, obviously. There will be a game or two that will have a required WolfMAME version... so just a heads up on that one.

gameboy9 wrote:Each game is going to be "get as far as you can in the least time possible"... but I may place a "maximum distance" in each game. Like your game could be over when you complete a certain number of stages.

Marco Marocco wrote:Very interesting format, but in my opinion it's better every player uses the same wolfmame

Of course, not everyone uses Windows either, so the latest version would be much better there (and since the monitor on my Windows PC has started acting up, I'm using it even less than before). X-MAME has various differences from MAME (let alone MAME Plus), and there are a few inaccuracies that can cause playback issues (although it's fine in general). X-WolfMAME 0.106 was never really designed for recording, it was more a rush job to have something that plays back currently existing INPs. There are times I wish people weren't so obsessed with 0.106 (And not having a GUI is no excuse).

Lack of GUI doesn't make a difference to me, but since my CPU is pretty slow now by today's standards, I don't like using newer versions of MAME if I'm forced to because they're much slower. There's games I can't run full speed in 0.140, but can in 0.106 and earlier.

...if anything, people should get off 0.106 because it has more input lag and a lot of non-working savestate support (for non-recording practice). I don't really think 0.104 is any better than 0.106 whatsoever.

That said, I don't think it's a good idea to allow pretty much every WolfMAME version ever in a tournament because you never know when the emulation of the game is going to be different in certain versions. If you have like two standardized versions, it's much easier to test the games beforehand to make sure they're fine in both versions.

I agree with BBH.
It would be convenient to allow two different and standarized versions of wolfmame, not more. Perhaps the best choice could be Wolfmame 0.106 and the latest Wolfmame (currently 0.140).
I'm not obsessed with 0.106 version, simply I hate command line. I don´t like wasting time writing commands I like one click and ready to play.
Don't you like command line? You could use wolf 0.106.
Do you like command line or prefer the latest version? You could use wolf 0.140.
As simple as that.

Last edited by el_fumador on Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

I say lack of GUI is no excuse, simply because there's always M+GUI or a multitude of other external GUIs that you can use. I am quite aware of how a command prompt frightens some people (especially Mac users ).